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Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein

 Your thinking is bold, far-reaching, and philosophical.  ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, August 8, 1911.

 Your study is extraordinarily intelligent  and contains splendid ideas whose priority I am happy to acknowledge as yours. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Dec. 23, 1912

You will see that this investigation is the necessary preliminary work for the psychology of Dem. praec. Spielrein’s case is proof of that (it’s in the Jahrbuch). ~Carl Jung, Freud/Jung Letters, Vol. 1, Page 23.

  Sincere thanks on behalf of my wife for the flowers. That was very sweet of you. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. [?] 1910

Your image has changed completely, and I want to tell you how very, very happy it makes me to be able to hope that there are people who are like me, people in whom living and thinking are one; good people who do not misuse the power of their mind to dream up fetters but rather to create freedoms.  ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, June 30, 1908.

 How great would be my happiness to find that person in you, that ‘esprit fort’ who never descends into sentimentality, but whose essential and innermost prerequisite for life is her own freedom and independence. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, June 30, 1908.

 I often think that the happiness that I want to give other people is begrudged me, or is returned to me in the form of hidden hostility, which is what has so often happened to me! Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, July 22, 1908

 At this meeting I really had an opportunity for the first time to see this great man [Freud] in my world, out of his own milieu, and thus to understand him much more deeply than before. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908

 He [Freud] is truly a great and good man who, by virtue of his wonderful knowledge of humankind and his experience of life, sees incomparably further than I do. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908

 If I have previously only admired this man [Freud] from a distance, now I have really come to love him. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, September 28, 1908

 I fear for my work, for my life’s task, for all the lofty perspectives that are being revealed to me by this new Weltanschauung as it evolves.  How shall I, with my sensitive soul, free myself from all these questions? ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

My mind is torn to its very depths. I, who had to be a tower of strength for many weak people, am the weakest of all. Will you forgive me for being as I am? For offending you by being like this, and forgetting my duties as a doctor towards you? Will you understand that I am one of the weakest and most unstable of human beings? And will you never take revenge on me for that, either in words, or in thoughts or feelings? ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

 I am looking for someone who understands how to love, without punishing the other person, imprisoning him or sucking him dry; I am seeking this as yet unrealized person who will manage to separate love from social advantage and disadvantage, so that love may always be an end in itself, and not just a means to an end. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

 It is my misfortune that I cannot live without the joy of love, of tempestuous, ever-changing love. This daemon stands as an unholy contradiction to my compassion and my sensitivity. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, December 4, 1908

 When love for a woman awakens within me, the first thing I feel is regret, pity for the poor woman who dreams of eternal faithfulness and other impossibilities,  and is destined for a painful awakening out of all these dreams. Therefore if one is already married it is better to engage in this lie and do penance for it immediately than to repeat the experiment again and again, lying repeatedly, and repeatedly disappointing. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Dec. 4, 1908

  I can hardly think that there is anything organically wrong with your foot, for the psychological situation is too powerfully and traumatically significant. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

 Only when you seek the happiness of the other, will your own happiness be granted. I allow myself to write to you so frankly and to admonish you because, after long and solitary reflection, I have eliminated from my heart all the bitterness against you which it still harboured. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

 But never forget that under  no circumstances must you retreat from an immediate goal which your heart considers good and reasonable. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

 He [Freud] has spoken several times of your dissertation, the best indication that it has made an impression  on him. You do not need my recommendation. Approach him as a great master and rabbi, then all will be well. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Sept. 22 [?], 1911.

 I am rather worried about how Freud will take the corrections I am introducing into the theory of sexuality. The more I write in my own style, the greater becomes the danger of misunderstandings, for inwardly I am quite alien to the spirit of the Viennese school, though not to the spirit of Freud. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 24, 1911

 He [Freud] wants to give me love, while I want understanding. I want to be a friend on an equal footing, while he wants to have me as a son. For that reason he ascribes to a complex everything I do which does not fit the framework of his teaching. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 4, 1913.

 At the meeting in Munich I saw clearly that Freud is lost to me. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, Nov. 4, 1913.

 Respect for the human personality and its motives should not be undermined by psychoanalysis.  Because I fight for that I suffer much. ~Carl Jung to Sabina Spielrein, April 1915.

This idea came originally Cf. my Symbols of Transformation; also Spielrein, “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenic”; Nelken, “Analytische Beobachtungen über Phantasien eines Schizophrenen”; C. A. Meier, “Spontanmanifestationen des kollektiven Unbewussten.” ~Carl Jung’s CW 8, Footnote 2

If one reads the recent researches of the Zurich school, for instance the works of Maeder, Spielrein, Nelken, Grebel-skaja, and Itten, one gets a powerful impression of the enormous symbolic activity in dementia praecox. ~Carl Jung,  CW 3, Para 390

regard to the mythological parallels, I would like to call your attention to the work of Boas,1 which includes a magnificent collection of American Indian sagas; then the book by Frobenius, Das Zeitalter des Sonnengottes; and finally the works of Abraham, Rank, Riklin, Jones, Freud, Maeder, Silberer, and Spielrein, and my own investigations in Symbols of Transformation. ~Carl Jung, CW 3, Para 478

Spielrein, too, gives some interesting examples of archaic definitions which, in the course of the illness, begin superimposing themselves on the meanings of words. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 200

What I said above about a disturbed reality function being replaced by an archaic substitute is supported by a remark of Spielrein’s: “I often had the illusion that the patients might simply be victims of a deep-rooted folk superstition.” ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 201

Spielrein evidently thinks symbols have a similar significance when she says: Thus a symbol seems to me to owe its origin to the striving of a complex for dissolution in the common totality of thought.… The complex is thus robbed of its personal quality.… This tendency towards dissolution or transformation of every individual complex is the mainspring of poetry, painting, and every form of art. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 201

If, for “complex,” we substitute the idea of “energy value,” i.e., the total affectivity of the complex, it is clear that Spielrein’s views fall into line with my own. . ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 201

Spielrein’s patient associated the act of boring with fire and procreation. ~Carl Jung, CW 4, Para 217

Concerning the substance of the rayed sceptre the following may be noted: Spielrein’s patient said that “God pierces the earth with his ray.” ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 638

Spielrein’s patient said of her snake: “It is God’s animal, it has such wonderful colours: green, blue, and white. ~Carl Jung, CW 5, Para 677

Spielrein (pp. 358ff.) found numerous allusions to this motif in an insane patient. Fragments of different things and materials were “cooked” or “burnt.” “The ashes can turn into a man,” said the patient, and she also saw “dismembered children in glass coffins.” ~Carl Jung’s CW 5, Footnote 4

Spielrein’s patient (p. 394) speaks of horses who eat human beings and even exhumed corpses. Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 29

Spielrein, “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falls von Schizophrenie” pp. 329ff. ~Carl Jung’s CW 11, Footnote 5,

Cf. “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass,” pp. 231f. For dismemberment, transformation, and recomposition in a case of schizophrenia, see Spielrein, “Ueber den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie,” pp. 358ff. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Footnote 2

from my pupil S. Spielrein: cf. “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens” (1912). This work is mentioned by Freud, who introduces the destructive instinct in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (orig. 1920), Ch. V. [More fully in Ch. VI, which contains the Spielrein reference: Standard Edn., XVIII, p. 55.—EDITORS.]

Pindar, fr. 166f. Spielrein’s patient (p. 371) also had this idea of splitting the earth: “Iron is used for boring into the earth—With iron you can make men—The earth is split, burst open, man is divided —Man is cut up and put together again—In order to put a stop to being buried alive, Jesus told his disciples to bore into the earth.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 47

Spielrein’s patient said that she too had been shot by God three times—“then came a resurrection of the spirit.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 52

Spielrein’s patient was also sick from “snake poison” (p. 385). Schreber said he was infected by “corpse poison,” that “soul murder” had been committed on him, etc. (pp. 54ff.). ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 66

Spielrein’s patient (p. 336) uses the same images; she speaks of the “rigidity of the soul on the cross,” of “stone figures” who must be “melted.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 68

Spielrein’s patient was also sick from “snake poison” (p. 385). Schreber said he was infected by “corpse poison,” that “soul murder” had been committed on him, etc. (pp. 54ff.). ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 66

Spielrein’s patient (p. 336) uses the same images; she speaks of the “rigidity of the soul on the cross,” of “stone figures” who must be “melted.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 68

This fact led my pupil Dr. Spielrein to develop her idea of the death-instinct, which was then taken up by Freud. In my opinion it is not so much a question of a death-instinct as of that “other” instinct (Goethe) which signifies spiritual life. ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 38

Spielrein’s patient received three arrow wounds from God, through her head, breast, and eye, “then came a resurrection of the spirit” (p. 376). In the Tibetan legend of Bogda Gesser Khan, the sunhero shoots his arrow into the forehead of the demoniacal old woman, who then eats him and spits him out again. In a legend of the Kalmucks, from Siberia, the hero shoots the arrow into the “bull’s-eye” that grows on the bull’s forehead and “emits rays.”  ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 94

Concerning the snake-kiss, see Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, III, p. 969. By this means a beautiful woman was set free. Spielrein’s patient (pp. 344f.) says: “Wine is the blood of Jesus.—The water must be blessed and was blessed by him.—He who is buried alive becomes a vineyard.  ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 157

Spielrein’s patient (p. 345), in connection with the significance of the communion, speaks of “water mingled with childishness,” “spermatic water,” “blood and wine.” On p. 368 she says: “The souls fallen in the water are saved by God: they fall on deeper ground. Souls are saved by the sun-god.” ~ Carl Jung, CW 5, Footnote 27

SPIELREIN, S. “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falls von Schizophrenie,” Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (Leipzig and Vienna), III (1912), ~Carl Jung’s Collected Works Bibliography

SPIELREIN, SABINA. “Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie (Dementia praecox),” Jb. psychoanal. psychopath. Forsch., III (1911), 329–400.  ~Carl Jung’s Collected Works, Bibliography.

SPIELREIN, SABINA. “Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens,” Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen (Leipzig and Vienna), IV (1912), 465–503. ~Carl Jung’s Collected Works Bibliography